Social media marketing can be a cost-effective tool to growing your business, but it can also be a complete time suck…if you let it.

Social media marketing can be a cost-effective tool to growing your business, but it can also be a complete time suck…if you allow it to be.

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You update your Facebook status…and see that a “friend” updated their blog with a new post that includes an embedded YouTube video…which ends and suggests another video (which you watch)…and you like it so much that you “Digg” it…where you see a video entitled “Could the iPod Shuffle be Swallowed” at Boing-Boing…and the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper…

Heck, I probably lost half of you to the video of the hungry shuffle owner, right?

Anyone who practices social media marketing has experienced this. Here are five tips you can use to better manage your time marketing your business using social media.

Make a schedule. I hear you. “Boooooooring.” However, if you create blocks of time for specific social media activities — blogging, commenting, tweeting, etc. — and focus on those activities you’ll be a lot more productive. By the same account, during blocks of time for making calls, developing proposals or having meetings, keep away from social media sites.

Use RSS. RSS stands for real simple syndication. With RSS you can subscribe to many blogs, podcasts and social media sites and have all that information delivered to one place. Try this: create a iGoogle page and start adding the RSS feeds from your favorite blogs, podcasts and social media sites. Over coffee, skim the titles, clicking on subjects you’re interested in. Don’t read them yet! Just bookmark them in Delicious or StumbeUpon. Later that day read through the links you’ve bookmarked and only read the best, more relevant three.

Update all your statuses (statii?) using Ping.fm.Ping.fm allows you to update your status at LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a dozen sites you’ve never heard of. Setting up all these accounts can take over an hour, but once it’s done, your voiceis multiplied across the Web.

Upload your video to multiple video sharing Web sites with TubeMogul.TubeMogul works like Ping.fm, except for video. Setup free accounts at the dozen or so video sharing Web sites TubeMogul works with (including YouTube) and greatly extend your reach. Since video often appears in universal search, you’re also increasing your chances of appearing on the first page of a Google search.

Shut off TweetDeck. Or whichever Twitter app you happen to use. It’s hard to ignore the constantly updating feed of your tweeps, and it’s certainly more interesting than that RFP you’ve been trying to read for the last hour. Turn on your Twitter app for 15 minutes at a time two or three times a day. Check out some of your favorite people, send off a couple of replies, and then shut down TweetDeck again.

There are certainly other time saving methods. What tools, tricks and tips do you have?

About the author

Rich Brooks is founder and president of flyte new media (http://www.flyte.biz), a Web design and Internet marketing firm in Portland, Maine. His monthly flyte log email newsletter and company blog (http://www.flyteblog.com) focus on Web marketing topics such as search engine optimization, blogs, social media, email marketing, and building Web sites that sell